Upala Sen
Published 05.08.25, 08:26 AM
Beginning
- Shibu Soren was born on January 11, 1944, into the Santhal community of Nemra village, then in Bihar.
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Tragedy
- In 1957, when he was still in middle school, mercenaries hired by mahajans (moneylenders) killed his father, a schoolteacher.
- The tragedy interrupted his education but armed Soren with a purpose: The deliverance of the tribal people from routine exploitation.
Transition
- Soren urged the community to stand up against mahajans who forced them to borrow money at exorbitant rates of interest.
- At 18, he formed an organisation focused entirely on tribal liberation and land rights. In the 1960s and 1970s, he launched a campaign against his people’s drinking habits. He also opened educational institutions for them, earning the moniker “Guruji”.
- People wrote songs about him in Khorta and Santhali. They began to believe that he had supernatural powers and could be present in more than one place at the same time.
JMM
- By the late 1960s, Soren had built a reputation for himself as a protector of the tribal poor. In 1973, he cofounded the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, or JMM, with A.K. Roy and Binod Bihari Mahato. The party played a key role in the creation of a Jharkhand state in 2000.
Feet of clay
- By the 1990s, his hero's sheen had come off a bit. He faced cases of bribery and disproportionate assets. Then, there were his political fl ip-fl ops and the case of his missing private secretary.
Minister
- Soren was Jharkhand chief minister for three very short terms — 10 days in 2005 and five months each in 2008-09 and 2009-10. Was elected to the Lok Sabha eight times between 1980 and 2014 and was a Rajya Sabha member for two terms. He was coal minister for a while in the Manmohan Singh government.
End
- Soren, who had been ailing for a while, died in New Delhi on August 4, 2025. One of his more recent photographs, circulating on social media, show him propped up in a sofa, his gaze tired, his beard immaculate. But many are still around who remember the tribal lad with flashing eyes and floating hair, inspired by freedom fighters Sidhu and Kanhu, strutting around with bow and arrows, vowing to rid the land of "outsiders